“His thing is wanting to be the same,” Rose’s brother, Reggie, says. Reggie finishes lunch and drives away, eventually making his way east on West 63rd Street. Thirteen years older, his domineering presence kept Derrick from being picked apart by the Gangster Disciples who controlled their neighborhood, then the parasitic runners and gatekeeping NCAA officials who controlled the avenues and mechanisms of escape. Nothing, not drug dealers or money-hungry basketball pimps or amateurism-guarding schoolmarms, would keep his brother stuck in Englewood. Traffic is thin as he crosses Halsted Street, with Kennedy-King College looking modern and alien at the intersection. Everything else is plywood and blight.

That’s the admission everyone has been digging for, but that’s not what he means: The new Derrick Rose is explosive and aggressive, but he’s coming back like Eve came back from the apple, mining intellectual and emotional depths he couldn’t have imagined when he first hurt his knee. He’s different now, for sure, maybe for better, maybe for worse. The old Derrick Rose is a casualty of the two injuries and the knowledge that came with them. “He’s gone,” Reggie says, and he sounds a little melancholy.

The two most obvious faces in the Rose Camp are his brother/manager, Reggie, and his agent, B.J. Armstrong. Reggie obviously did little to help his brother’s cause on Feb. 21, 2013, blasting the organization on the night of the trade deadline for its lack of movement. Never mind that Derrick Rose was still nursing a torn left anterior cruciate ligament, despite team doctors clearing him to return. It wasn’t the last time the organization would have problems with Reggie expressing his opinion. Then there’s Armstrong. The former Bulls guard and title winner worked for the organization under former general manager Jerry Krause. But when vice president of basketball operations John Paxson came in, Armstrong was demoted from his assistant GM post into a scouting position. Armstrong was completely out by 2005, reportedly unhappy with Paxson and the Bulls. The fact that Armstrong, who works for the Wasserman Media Group in Los Angeles, became Rose’s agent was an obvious concern for the Bulls.